ibeforreal

I could not find enough information in one place that demonstrated how to removed the dreaded door lock actuator so I am creating a new one. Apologies if there is already one available.

After much misery and a few words of choice I decided to document my process in hopes that it will assist others and make their repair much easier. Here is the PDF file I created. Comments, suggestions, and corrections are welcome.

mercy-me

John,
Thanks for taking the time to share this tutorial! This should be in our encyclopedia for sure! Both of my front doors the soft close has stopped working and need to have the actuators rebuilt. I plan on doing mine sometime this summer and will follow up with my story to add to yours. I am glad that you eliminated removing the window as instructed in the WIS.

Thanks again, Bob

mcguirja

ibeforreal

OK so it was raining here all day today and I had a day off....well sort of. Trying to think of things to do I got real crazy....OK, most folks say that is normal for me. Listening to the radio I heard the Lionel Richie song EASY where one of the lines in the song is.... "Might sound crazy but I just can't stand the pain".

So I took all of my door panels off and put zip ties around the part of the actuator that always seem to crack. I guess you could call it preventive maintenance. I didn't have to take the actuators out in order to install the zip ties. Hopefully this will relieve some of the pressure that is applied during the soft close. It probably took me about 1/2 hour per door.

We'll see if it does any good in the future.

Lakota651

Awesome guide John. Much obliged.

ibeforreal

Thanks and you're welcome.

tusabes

Awesome guide

I'm flattered you gave my screen name credit too!! Happy to help in whatever little ways I can

mnarub12

The guide you provided was very helpful in installing the front actuators.
Do you have similar information for rear doors?

Samorai981

Thanks for the great information

HJAMES608

A thousand thanks for this very detailed guide! I am currently repairing a broken actuator on my front passenger side door [2001 S55], and was going crazy trying to remove the unit assembly without having to drill out the rivets. As you pointed out, they do have to be drilled out. So I can proceed knowing there's no other practical alternative.
Again, thanks a lot.

ibeforreal

You're welcome.

buddysharp

You are a lifesaver. Thank you for taking the time to do this.

ibeforreal

You are certainly welcome. I know how frustrated I was when I had to do mine. I attempted to put it in the simplest terms that I could.

Fried Chicken

Just did this for the driver's side door. Appreciate the writeup. Bought seemingly the last door latch in the U.S., mercedes now lists it as discontinued. I plastic-epoxied the notorious soft close mechanism on the bottom, hopefully it'll stop it from going pop too soon. If you do this, make sure to order the rivets with the door latch. I didn't, and had to use aluminum rivets which aren't as strong as steel rivets. I hope there isn't a metal incompatibility issue. Also when drilling the old rivets out, use a larger drill bit, not a smaller one. You want to take the top off the rivet, not drill through it. Also replaced what mercedes calls the "check strap"; part #: 220-720-00-16. It's the part that notches the door.

Very clever design depending on what side it goes on, you flip it around. It has two labels on it on the tops/bottoms "VL" and "VR". VL = "Vorne Links", front left. VR = "Vorne Rechts", front right. If it goes on the driver's side door ("Vorne Links", Front Left), you have the VL facing up, and vice-versa on the other side. You should be able to identify it based on the old one too. You have to have the door panel off to do this and fish it out. I removed the speaker and quickly fished the old one out and installed the new one.

Mercedes doors/trim come together extremely well, you can't tell anyone was in there.